1968: the Whole Earth Catalog launches

Andy Kirk, a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, looks at one of the key publishing events of the year, Stewart Brand’s release of the Whole Earth Catalog:

Today many know Brand and his Catalog as part of the information revolution and the cyberculture it spawned. As an environmental historian, however, I see the Whole Earth Catalog as relevant 50 years later for another reason.

Starting with that amazing image of the planet in a sea of inky black space, Brand helped change the trajectory and constituency of the American environmental movement by bringing together a new community of environmental thinkers and advocates who invented what came to be known as “sustainability.”